Author Topic: 1 year anniversary  (Read 4028 times)

Offline Numsgil

  • Administrator
  • Bot God
  • *****
  • Posts: 7742
    • View Profile
1 year anniversary
« on: July 03, 2009, 02:27:26 PM »
Tomorrow, July 4th, at about 3 PM PDT will be the one year anniversary since I started working on the current Darwinbots 3 source code and directories, not counting the work I did on DNA about a year before that.

I figured I'd post a progress report:

Lines of code: 30117

Accomplishments:

1.  There's currently a build system in place I'm pleased with.  It works just by scanning for copies of Visual Studio installed on the computer and using it to compile all the solution files it finds by recursively looking through the source tree.  It manages this just using batch files.  I've seen build systems at two other professional game studios, and I have to say I like this one better than any of those.

If nothing else it's extremely simple (no external dependencies beyond Visual Studio) yet still entirely automated.

2.  UnitTestSharp - I've built a unit testing framework in C# that I use to thoroughly test all the other modules in the code.  It also happens to be written to test itself, which I thought was pretty cool.  Nothing involved with UnitTestSharp, or any of the unit tests I've written, will ever reach the final user, but it helps ensure that the code the final user does get works as expected.  Or at least when it breaks and I isolate the bug, it never breaks in that particular way ever again.

3.  Physics - Lodestone - Physics is only about 30% done, but I've successfully managed to figure out how it will work, which is good since I had no idea a year ago   Also want to thank Prsn since he did a lot of work building the scaffolding for the rest of the physics.  My work on physics has also successfully gotten me a job working at Havok, which is pretty cool.

4.  Math - Azimuth - I've looked around online for math libraries for .NET with appropriate open source licenses, and they really don't exist.  So I built my own   As far as I know, this it's the only MIT-style open source library around that can solve systems of linear equations.  There's still a lot of work to do with it, though, especially for sparse matrices.

5.  Graphics - Work has been started on a vector graphics library.  It's still in its infancy, but when done it will allow you to switch between rendering using GDI (and thus you can run Darwinbots on any computer with .NET) or rendering using XNA (for fancier affects and xbox support).

Future work:
6.  Basically so far the foundation has been set.  Most of the current work invovles fleshing out the middle tier modules (things like graphics, physics, etc. etc.), which are, on a whole, maybe 40% complete.

7.  I still need to figure out a system to profile the code.  At the moment none of it is optimized.

8.  Likewise I need to figure out a system for determining code coverage.  At the moment, I have no way of knowing what sections of the code are untested beyond just having a good memory.

Offline Jez

  • Bot Overlord
  • ****
  • Posts: 788
    • View Profile
1 year anniversary
« Reply #1 on: July 09, 2009, 09:12:30 PM »
       I just thought it deserved some sort of celebration!

Thanks to you for putting all the hard work in that you have and thanks to those that have helped you get this far. Keep up the good work!
If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have in your hands is a non-working cat.
Douglas Adams

Offline Testlund

  • Bot God
  • *****
  • Posts: 1574
    • View Profile
1 year anniversary
« Reply #2 on: July 10, 2009, 07:45:44 PM »
Congratulations to your progress so far, Numsgil! I've given up on DB2 because of the mutation limitations. Can't get anything going no matter what, so I hope you'll have something ready for us to play with at least this autumn, which is a boring season.  
The internet is corrupt and controlled by criminally minded people.

Offline Numsgil

  • Administrator
  • Bot God
  • *****
  • Posts: 7742
    • View Profile
1 year anniversary
« Reply #3 on: July 11, 2009, 03:00:12 PM »
I'll see what I can do

Offline jknilinux

  • Bot Destroyer
  • ***
  • Posts: 468
    • View Profile
1 year anniversary
« Reply #4 on: July 13, 2009, 10:02:28 PM »
I'm glad your dedication has helped you IRL land a job with Havoc. Congrats! Your contributions are most appreciated.

Offline Ta-183

  • Bot Destroyer
  • ***
  • Posts: 105
    • View Profile
1 year anniversary
« Reply #5 on: July 15, 2009, 02:09:19 PM »
Great job landing in a spot with Havok! Maybe you can help make it a bit more realistic, Gmod could really use it....

Anyway, I'm well on my way to learning C++ with my current classes at the community college, maybe I'll pick up C# and lend a hand in development.

Offline Numsgil

  • Administrator
  • Bot God
  • *****
  • Posts: 7742
    • View Profile
1 year anniversary
« Reply #6 on: July 15, 2009, 07:50:58 PM »
Quote from: jknilinux
I'm glad your dedication has helped you IRL land a job with Havoc. Congrats! Your contributions are most appreciated.


Quote from: Ta-183
Great job landing in a spot with Havok! Maybe you can help make it a bit more realistic, Gmod could really use it....

Thanks.  I'm still working my way through the training procedure.  Basically my job will be to help clients (Valve, etc. etc.) with any bugs/questions they have

Quote
Anyway, I'm well on my way to learning C++ with my current classes at the community college, maybe I'll pick up C# and lend a hand in development.

Would be much appreciated.